A right royal cop-out

Two unelected heads of state: Charles Windsor and Cuban president Miguel Díaz-Canel

In an extraordinary editorial (“Funerals, bank holidays and collectivism: for a socialist approach”) that appeared online dated 18 September, the Morning Star warned against “confus[ing] public displays of affection for Elizabeth II with intrinsically reactionary political outlooks”, advising that we “should recognise the instinct for community and belonging which can be channelled along these lines.”

The editorial then went to describe objections to shops being closed on the day of the funeral (were there many such objections?) as “choruses of individualist outrage at decisions by retailers like McDonald’s or Greggs to close on the grounds that we might fancy a Big Mac or a vegan sausage roll.”

Shamefully and bizarrely, the political conclusion of all this was that “while the motives — and, given arrests, the courage — of many sporting the placards saying Not My King should be applauded, it is not a socialist slogan. Like ‘Not My President’ in the United States, it expresses a refusal to endorse something but can also imply a rejection of the legitimacy of majority opinion itself. Socialists know majority opinion is not necessarily correct, but our task is to win it to support for socialism — not set ourselves up as self-righteously independent.”

Like the paper’s craven appeal to the supposed “majority of workers” to justify its support for Brexit, this was giving up on any concept of independent working class politics: a right royal cop-out.

The immediate reaction of the Morning Star to the death of Elizabeth Windsor had been different. An editorial on 9 September (the day after the royal demise) was headed “Calls for ‘national unity’ must not be allowed to disarm the working class” and contained the following:

“The death of Queen Elizabeth II will place huge pressure on workers and trade unions to park their industrial struggles in the name of national unity… Nobody will say that the Queen’s death means company bosses should drop their vicious attacks on workers’ rights as a mark of respect…

“Propaganda about the nation coming together is just that. The Conservatives are not concerned with the ‘national interest’ but only the interests of their class: when we doff our caps we abandon the interests of our own”.

This would have to have been written before several unions, including the RMT, announced they were calling off planned action.

The very next day, in the weekend edition (10-11 September), the Morning Star front page quoted Communist Party of Britain general secretary Robert Griffiths thus:

“Millions of people face enormous challenges in the weeks and months ahead and the role of the Communist Party is to prepare for the battles ahead, not to indulge in infantile posturing or to attack trade unions in struggle for their tactical decisions”.

By then, presumably, Alex Gordon (Communist Party of Britain Central Committee member and RMT president) had let it be known that he didn’t want the Morning Star slagging off the RMT’s decision.

Most people on the left would accept that the royal death posed some real difficulties for unions in industrial dispute: should they risk losing momentum by postponing action, or risk alienating public support (and the support of some of their own members) by continuing regardless? It was a genuine dilemma and there was nothing wrong with union leaders taking it seriously. The rather grovelling tributes to the Queen from the RMT and others were another matter.

All the more reason, you’d have thought, for a socialist publication to challenge the idea that workers have anything in common with the royals and other billionaires and millionaires: an idea that the first Labour leader Keir Hardie said “blinds the eyes of the people”. All the more reason to champion those who bravely protested against the monarchy — and in some cases were met with police repression and even arrest. But no.